Mobile devices such as smart phones (e.g., Android phones or i-Phone®), i-Pad® or laptop computers, have become very popular devices for reproducing audio and video contents. Although the bandwidth of networks to communicate to and from such mobile devices is increasing, in current mobile devices, the device itself performs many tasks on the device side through execution of application programs running on an operating system. Examples of mobile device operating systems include versions of Windows®, Android, MAC OS, iOS, Linux, a RIM OS, QNX, GENIVI or VxWorks. The application programs may include, for example, a web-browsing program, an AV reproducing program, a social networking (SNS) system program, utility programs or games. Accordingly, it is necessary for the current mobile devices to have a high performance CPU and a large capacity storage device such as a HDD (hard disk drive) or a flash memory having more than several giga-byte capacities, which inevitably makes the mobile devices complex, power consuming, heavy and expensive.
On the other hand, a so-called “thin-client” system has been developed. In the thin-client system, the servers process most of the tasks and the terminals have minimum functions. In some applications, the terminal may not have a HDD or a high capacity flash memory to locally store data for security reasons. Such terminals of the thin-client system, however, still need an operating system. Thus, it is necessary to update the operating system, for example, periodically. Further, in the thin-client system, since one family of operating systems (e.g., the Windows® family) is utilized, only applications that can run on such an OS family are available through the terminal device.
However, as the bandwidth of the networks increases, communication latency becomes shorter, and cost for the use of the network becomes lower, the function or role of the mobile devices may change. For example, mobile devices may become mere input/output terminals, while all tasks are processed at servers accessed over the network. The mobile devices may be utilized to input commands from the user and to output (e.g., display) results responsive to the input. This will become more feasible in cloud computing systems. Accordingly, there is a need for a terminal device which is simple, light weight and low cost.